EAST LANSING – Connor Cook’s second pass of the season was a good one for a touchdown but the aftermath looked frightening. After rolling to his right and throwing to Tony Lippett for a 64-yard scoring play, the Michigan State quarterback was hit hard, low and late by a Jacksonville State defensive back.

Cook’s left knee bent backward. He stayed down on the ground. A hush quelled the cheering of 75,127 fans at Spartan Stadium on Friday night. What if the starting quarterback was out for the season? Cook was helped to the sideline.

Officials charged a 15-yard penalty to the visitors for a personal foul on the ensuing kickoff.

“It was frightening,” Cook said. “I haven’t got hit like that in a while.”

To the relief of Michigan State fans, Cook returned for the next series and finished with three touchdown passes in a 45-7 victory that left the Spartans 1-0.

But what if his season had been ruined on his first drive? What if a cheap shot and its insignificant 15-yard penalty had ruined MSU’s chances to repeat as Big Ten champions and robbed the Spartans of a chance to challenge for the national title?

Here’s a suggestion for those seeking to make football safer: Penalize personal fouls like this much more severely. Two ways to do it would be to borrow from either hockey or soccer -- or both -- in assessing punishment.

Consider: Instead of merely walking off 15 yards against the offending team, why not create a virtual penalty box and make the penalized team line up with 10 players, instead of the usual 11, for the next play?

If the personal foul was especially dirty, why not put a player in the “penalty box” for two or even three plays?

Or, if you borrow from soccer, a player with a personal foul would be given a yellow card as a warning, as referees do for dangerous plays in that sport. If the player commits another personal foul, he is out of the game and can’t come back.

Technically, football officials have the right to eject players for dirty play but they rarely do. This mentality gives the advantage to the cheaters because they can help their team by breaking the rules and maiming an opponent.

For instance: If a defensive back puts a quarterback out of the game with a late hit to the knees -- like the one we saw Friday night -- that foul hurts the victim and his team far more than the perpetrator and his.

The victim might be out for the game or for the season and his team might lose without him. The perpetrator costs his team only 15 yards -- which are particularly insignificant on a kickoff to the end zone.

In a cost/benefit analysis, this makes it advantageous to deliberately or even accidentally injure an opponent. But if the dirty play meant his team had to play shorthanded for one or more plays, in addition to the lost yardage, a vicious hitter might be discouraged by his peers from delivering late shots intended to injure.

Think how either type of punishment might affect a repeat offender like defensive tackle Ndamukong Suh of the Detroit Lions. If he “accidentally” kicks an opposing lineman during a pileup, an official would present him with a yellow card along with a 15-yard walkoff.

If he does anything like it again, the card shown to him would be red and he would not play for the rest of the game and maybe the next one, too, pending league review.

Or, borrowing from hockey, a Suh foul might mean the Lions playing with 10 men for one or more plays. It might make him think twice before escalating his violent behavior.

Luckily for Michigan State, Cook will be ready for next week’s intersectional showdown at Oregon, a marquee non-league game.

Joe Lapointe is a sports columnist for MLive.com. He is a 20-year veteran of the New York Times sports department, 11-year veteran of the Detroit Free Press, and a Detroit native.